


of all the western stars

by thefudge



Category: Jackie (2016), Political RPF - US 20th c.
Genre: Brother and Sister in Law, F/M, Family Dynamics, Family Secrets, Forbidden Love, Grief/Mourning, Mild Gore, the Kennedys are a Greek tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 14:00:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13976625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: They rode in the hearse together, Jack’s coffin between them like a sundered limb. Based partially on the movie Jackie (2016).





	of all the western stars

**Author's Note:**

> This was something in my drafts from like a year ago and I only got around to finishing it now. After watching "Jackie" last year I started writing something, but I kind of left it shapeless and inchoate. Here's the finished result? This is also based on pleeenty of articles and books about the post-1963 affair between Bobby and Jackie (which definitely happened). The whole family is kind of incestuous. But anyway. This is my heavily fictionalized account of that time. Some lines are taken directly from the movie. Oh yeah, the chronology is also non-linear, so it will jump around a lot. Err, enjoy the story you never asked for?

“Let me read you something,” he said, stroking the side of her arm.

Actually, he intended to recite. He always did that, always began with a little lie. Bobby had always been the bookish one.

He spoke the words into the crown of her hair.

“Come, my friends …'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order, smite the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die.”

Jackie opened her eyes wide. She could see the western stars projected on the plaster-cast ceiling. They were bleeding red. She rubbed her cheek against Bobby’s shirt.

“It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,” he continued in the same wry tone. “It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles…and see the great Achilles, whom we knew.”

_Whom we knew._

Oh, yes, they had known him. They had stood in the same room as him. And he had shone on them his terrible light. The great Achilles, shot down before his time.

Jackie cleared her throat against the cold buttons of his shirt. “I know this. It sounds familiar.”

“I’ve read it to you before,” Bobby reminded her, not with remonstrance. He didn't mind that she did not remember. It had been a happier time. A summer afternoon, and everything was rosy and gilded, even their skin.

 

 

She was going to marry his brother in the morning and Jack wasn’t allowed to see her. So Bobby went to Hammersmith Farm in his stead. He was only twenty-eight, fresh from his Asian tour, sporting a tan and dazzling white teeth, holding himself like a young cadet. He stopped her on the terrace, seized her wrist and checked her pulse.

“Are you nervous?”

She smiled and shook him off. “Everyone else is more nervous than me.”

The wording struck him as odd and so he asked her to explain, and she said, “You see, I’m pretty sure of what I’m doing.”  

Bobby laughed in that sad way of his that looked like crying. He was delighted with her answer. She did not know, of course, and he would never tell her that _he_ had been the one who'd persuaded his brother to propose.

He placed a small, leather-bound volume in her hands. A “wedding gift” before the rest of the family overpowered her with their affection. She stared at the book for several moments, without opening it. Lord Alfred Tennyson’s Collected Poems.

Bobby climbed up the short flight of stairs and stood by her shoulder. He leaned forward and opened the volume, turning it to a page he knew from memory. 

“This one got me through Operation Aphrodite.”

Jackie moved her head slightly. His face was very close, but he was not looking at her. She could smell his sweat, could almost picture the morning knife on his clean-shaven face.

 _Operation Aphrodite._ She remembered.  His eldest brother, Patrick, had died during that raid.  

“Such a beautiful name for a terrible thing,” she noted, glancing down at the page.

Bobby nodded, tapping the poem with his index finger. “It’s what got me through it.”

It was called _Ulysses_ , the poem.

“And do you think I’ll need it for tomorrow?” she asked, playfully. “To get me through it?”

Wasn’t this another kind of Operation Aphrodite?

In lieu of an answer, he started reading the poem over her shoulder. But he wasn’t _actually_ reading it.

His eyes glazed over the page, his head in the crook of her neck. He was telling it to her, reciting from memory.

“All times I have enjoy'd/ Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those/That loved me, and alone, on shore…”

The shore was nearby, she could hear the waves. Suffering, too, waited like a bird of prey.

Jackie held the volume with shaking fingers as Bobby spoke words into her skin.

 

 

They rode in the hearse together, Jack’s coffin between them like a sundered limb.

She was still wearing her pink Channel, sprayed delicately with her husband’s blood.

“I want a closed casket, Bobby. I want it so badly.” Her voice was hoarse with repeating herself. No one listened to her, except him.

He held her hand over the coffin.

“I don’t think that’s possible for a Head of State.”

Jackie wailed silently. _Head_ of State. Words are so cruel. Her husband’s beautiful head was gone.

She stared at Bobby’s perfect head, still intact, no bullet hole. He noticed her looking.

He wanted to scream at her. He wanted to tell her, _You should’ve jumped in front of him._

A lapse in judgment. He didn’t mean it. He shut his eyes against it.

But Jackie would’ve done it.  If she could’ve, she would’ve stopped the bullet with her palms and then she would have swallowed it.

Bobby squeezed her hand, dragged it to his mouth and kisses the knuckles until his lips were numb, until he felt rightly punished.

In the end, they were both cowards.

 

 

He pulled her away from the autopsy room before she could see her husband being cut open. It wasn’t that she could not stomach the horror. She had held her hand inside his brother's skull.

So, it wasn't that. 

Bobby pulled her away because he needed _her_ to pull him away too. He needed a reason not to barge in that room.

He held her in his arms like she was a prison and he had to stay inside his cell. The last breath of his brother was on her. He clung to that pink suit like it was poisoned salmon.

 

 

She played Jack's favorite musical on the record player and tried on all manner of dresses and jewelry, going through the calendar of the past, relinquishing its hold on her, making sure she wouldn’t be nostalgic for any of it. There was nothing to be nostalgic for now. The past would be as damned as the present. She ran the string of pearls over her lips. She needed more gin.  

She stared at the family photo on the mantle. It was taken right after their victory, the starling year of 1960. She was wearing a red carnation dress, sitting on the couch next to Teddy. Jack and Bobby were standing behind her, stiff but happy. Jack was staring into the camera, but Bobby was looking at her.

 _Why_ was she not standing with them? Why was she _sitting_ on the couch next to Teddy? She couldn’t remember anymore. She wrinkled her nose. Teddy’s posture was so relaxed, so boyish. And she looked so matronly, so proud of herself. She wanted to go back in time and stand up.

She leafed through family albums in a fever. She needed to call her mother and tell her to bring all the photos. She _hated_ herself in all the beach photos. There was Bobby again in his swim trunks and white T-shirt and she was standing next to him, while Jack entertained Ethel, his wife. Everything was asymmetrical; everything was in the wrong place.

She was looking for signs, in a way. Had fate tried to tell her? Had it been foretold?

She twirled on the spot, glass in her hand, and hummed, “In short…there’s simply not a more congenial spot…than here in Camelot…”

 

 

“How _dare_ you keep that from me? You had no right,” she spat into his face. “The _children_? I took them out the front door.”

Bobby tried to appease her, but he could see it was a losing battle. She’d stormed into his office after she found out Oswald was shot. She wanted the parade to be cancelled, but he could see it in her eyes, she also wanted it to go on.

“This is all insanity!” she snarled. “You and your brother, all these years, all your goddamn secrets.”

“That’s not fair,” he interjected weakly.

“Caroline and John are all I have left and I put them in danger because of _you_!”

“I would never put you and the children in danger.” He kept repeating it like a mantra while she berated him and scolded him and made him feel small. “I would never put you and the children in danger.”

“I know you think I’m some silly little debutante –”

“No. _No_. Listen to me.” He would not allow that. He had never thought of her as _anything_ remotely silly. He had often tried not to think of her at all.

“I would never put you and the children in danger.”

 

 

And then, it was his turn to throw a tantrum. He found her in the Lincoln room, staring bleakly at Mary Todd’s celestial portrait. She was ruminating about her own destiny as a widow. She wondered if Mary Todd knew how they worshiped her now.

“Why is this room so peaceful?” she asked languidly.

“Peaceful…I don’t know,” he almost chuckled, staring at the Gettysburg address still enshrined on the table. “I think of it as a place of …profound legacy. And it’s too bad that ours is totally fucking _wasted_.”

“Bobby. Bobby, watch your mouth.”

He slammed the door behind him. He walked around the side of the Lincoln bed and stared her down.

“What? What did we accomplish, huh? We’re just – we’re just the beautiful people. Isn’t that what we are?”

“Bobby.”

“Because what did we _truly_ accomplish?”

She clenched her fists in her lap. She patted the spot on the bed next to her.

He ambled aimlessly around the room until he fell right beside her.

“We could’ve done _so_ much. Civil Rights, space program, Vietnam…Now Johnson gets to handle Vietnam.”

He recited it all since he was very good at it. He faithfully inventoried the many things they could have accomplished, things like playing cards, stacked together against the odds. He lingered on each slice of unlived history and all she could think of was _Camelot_.

“You can’t do that to yourself, Bobby.”

He didn’t pause to absorb her comforting words. He slashed her with his tongue. “What’s _wrong_ with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“You think they'll remember you for this display?"

"What display - Bobby -"

"History is harsh. We’re ridiculous. _You’re_ ridiculous. _Look_ at you.”

And he grabbed her shoulders and shook them. He framed her face with his palms. He smiled a horrible little smile.

“Fucking ridiculous,” he repeated, taking in her little black dress, her red-rimmed eyes, Mary Todd’s bloviate portrait behind her.

She rubbed her face against his palm like a cat.

He rose abruptly, putting his palm over his mouth.

They stood, together and apart, in the Lincoln room. When he finally left, he shut the door very quietly behind him.

 

 

(Time is a devil. In a few months, he would be thankful. He would be thankful that Jack had been there to shield her from the bullet. He’d be thankful for her, his brother’s widow, sitting by his side, running a wooden comb through her daughter's hair. He would have John, his nephew, on his knee. They would talk about Jack as if he were there with them, but his ghost never had much room between them, not truly)

 

 

It must have been the party where she wore the red carnation dress. Probably the first banquet of 1961. She was dancing with Bobby and he was making faces at her, trying to break her dignified composure. Jackie stifled a laugh and scolded him with her finger. Bobby pretended to bite her finger. He wasn’t even all that drunk. He said she’d never been more beautiful.

“Winning an election did wonders to your skin,” he remarked, resting his thumb under her chin.

“Jack is the winner here,” she pointed out, gliding away from his touch. 

And then the President tapped his shoulder playfully and asked to dance with his wife.

Bobby relinquished his hold on her, still making those absurd faces, still trying to get her to laugh. 

But she was in a different state now. She always became a little stupid when Jack put his arm around her waist. She wasn’t proud of it. She leaned her head on his shoulder and felt the strength leak out of her.

Bobby watched her from across the room, eyes slanted. Laughter sat uneasy in his throat.

Yes, Jack was the winner.

But he wouldn’t be for long.

Look at him now.

Bobby knelt next to Jackie and they both rested their foreheads against the draped casket.

 

 

He told Jack that if he didn’t marry this girl he would be a _fool_. She was a priceless political jewel. With her pedigreed background at debutante school, then honors student at Vassar and the Sorbonne, her little French airs, her studied ease with foreign languages, why, the constituents would eat her up.

“And hey, she’s the Inquiring Camera Girl,” Bobby added with a grin. She looked ever so sweet, gallivanting through the city with a camera around her throat, asking people their candid opinions on Senator Nixon and canned peaches and marriage.

“Would you rather be an old man’s darling or a young man’s slave?” she’d asked once, but she’d never gotten an answer.

Bobby thought she was ripe for marriage. And if Jack married her, why, she'd belong to the _whole_ family.

(yes, perhaps he _had_ considered her a little silly then - just a passing thought, a passing desire. How silly it would be if she were his instead)

 

 

“You _did_ read it to me before,” she confirmed with a faraway look. She still didn’t remember, he thought fondly.

That was all right. She had tried to forget a lot of things.

He kissed the crown of her head. He breathed in her perfume. She still smelled of horses. They had gone riding together that morning. They both enjoyed the outdoors so much, they could never get enough sunshine.

Caroline ran in from the pool with her hair wet and shimmering but she ignored them, her sordid uncle and her washed-up mother. She walked past the drawing room without a glance back.

“ _Ulysses_ ,” Jackie mumbled all of a sudden. “The poem. I remember. But do you know what I find selfish?”

“No. Tell me,” he said, marveling at the mystery of her brain.

“He made it home. You know? He returned to his wife and son after such a long and perilous journey…and instead of enjoying the time he had with them, he decided he had to go again. Had to leave them all behind to seek the western stars and _die_. Tell me that’s not selfish.”

She lifted her head, catching his breath. He kissed her on the mouth, tasted his own selfishness.

“You’re right. Of course, you’re right,” he mumbled against her lips.

 (He had brought up the poem, hoping she would take to the idea of sailing beyond the sunset again. Hoping she might want to sail with him. He had wanted to run for President, no matter how selfish.)

 

He couldn’t abide to listen to _Camelot_. He forbade the records at Glen Cove. He hoped it would never play on Broadway again. He hated the reference. He hated the fact that she had made sure it would remain their _legacy_.

“Don’t let it be forgot, that for one brief, shining moment there was Camelot,” she’d quoted to that damned journalist.

As if _that's_ what they'd accomplished, after all.

Bobby felt she’d done it to spite him for that fight in the Lincoln room. 

He hated that he was forever the Lancelot to her Guinevere. He had wanted to be Arthur, Achilles and Ulysses, all in one. Not second fiddle, not cold comfort. Instead, he was one of the brothers who had not yet died.

So, whenever he was in a punishing mood, whenever she called him with tears in her mouth, demanding to know where he was, _who_ he was with, he’d quote the song back at her.

_“…there’s simply not a more congenial spot…than here in Camelot…”_

 

 

He got his wish eventually. He became Arthurian. He went on the journey of no return. He was shot before his time. She buried him too.

She never got to keep him, _any_ of them.

And on his chest she pressed the leather-bound volume that was never hers, that was always his.

He had only lent it to her, for a period of time, to get her through


End file.
